…let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in one body…And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him. (Colossians 3:15-17, ESV)
To say the world of golf is “fractured” would be a gross understatement. Every day, we are confronted with headlines of yet another tirade of one golfer attacking another golfer.
The grammar alone is telling: Billy “slams” Bobby; Johnny “smashes” Jimmy; Frank “bashes” Tom; on and on it goes. Sadly, peace is in short supply.
This fracturing is obviously not confined to the game of golf. Choose fidelity to any biblical issue, and you will be in an ideological war. Are we surprised? If we are, we are woefully unaware of the church’s history.
Looking at the relationship between Christians and culture throughout the last two thousand years, we quickly discover the church is attacked for its faithfulness to Christ’s commands. Nero, Domitian, and others persecuted the early church for its commitment to righteousness. Our brothers and sisters around the world are frequently persecuted for the same reason.
It seems we have lived in a flourishing and relatively hospitable culture for so long that we’ve forgotten that the “good fruits” of Western society are the outcome of a Christian worldview.
If our cultural institutions refuse “to dance with the one who brung ya” and then attempt to build a society on secular or pagan principles, then we must face the hard truth of America’s inevitable decline. An uprooted tree cannot last long unless placed back in the nourishing soil from which it was drawn.
Ironically, the peace we seek in cultural matters requires unrest. In moments like the one in which we live, the absence of peace is a positive indicator that moral men and women are taking a stand for righteousness, trying to replant our societal tree in its Judeo-Christian soil.
If you are pro-life, choose to stand for biblical marriage, or adhere to a biblical perspective on sex and gender, you have irreconcilable differences with our secular culture. Choose to respect our Cultural Christian heritage; you’ll find yourself in a collective war for the soul and future of America!
Please don’t misunderstand; Christians never have the liberty of acting unbecomingly toward those who despise biblical ethics. We are, at Christ’s command, to love our enemies. Christ’s willing sacrifice of himself at the hands of wicked men was a triumph. We win when we counter hate with love. We win when we counter vitriol with gracious and kind responses.
The issues mentioned above are not, first and foremost, political issues; they are ethical and cultural issues. Consequently, America can only recover from her cultural malaise if she collectively adopts a Christian view of the world. And that can only happen if Christians are faithful to be “salt and light” in the world.
Remember, when we say, “Jesus is Lord,” we are saying, “The Prince of Peace is Lord over all things,” including the family, economics, science, education, art, sexuality, church, politics, and the sport of kings—the game of golf. Our desire should be to structure every one of these spheres on biblical principles. Only then will we have meaningful cultural peace.
Turning to Scripture, we discover cultural peace has deeper roots. For America to recover cultural peace, we need what Scotland needed in the 16th century: a revival. We need precisely what England and America needed in the late 18th century and received: a Great Awakening.
Reformation always follows revival: First, We have peace with God through Christ; Second, We receive the peace of God in our souls by the indwelling of the Holy Spirit; and Third, We find peace with one another (societal peace) through Spirit-empowered forgiveness and good deeds.
So, we must cry out to God to send a revival—an awakening of vast swaths of the American population to repent of sin and follow hard in faith after Christ Jesus in every aspect of life. Remember, “What is impossible with man is possible with God.”
Prayer: God our Father, please visit our beloved nation and world with massive outpourings of your Spirit and bring us on bended knee to the Prince of Peace.